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Powered by our people

Powered by our people

What this means

  • Investing in our people by creating a Skills Powered Organization and equipping Arcadians with the skills to address future client needs and deliver greater efficiency.

  • Prioritizing continuous learning, expertise and adaptability among employees through initiatives such as the Energy Transition Academy.

  • Reinforcing the GECs, aiming to double the GECs' contribution to total billable hours.

Skills Powered Organization (SPO)

An SPO is an organization that prioritizes a skills-based approach to support project resourcing and career development. Our SPO platform, launched in 2024, is designed for Arcadians to identify and match their skills to job openings and project assignments from around the world.

Turning Arcadis into an SPO helps us efficiently distributing our resources to be more productive, making sure we connect our workforce to fee-earning project work more effectively. Furthermore, it opens up new avenues for Arcadians to progress their careers beyond the conventional, linear routes, creating new opportunities outside their team or geographical location.

The SPO platform helps make our human capital more mobile and agile in several important ways, one of which is through the use of “gigs”; which are one-time opportunities on single projects, which help us fill skill gaps for individual assignments. For example, a team based in Canada could post a gig on the SPO platform to recruit someone temporarily to work on a highway project in Toronto. The SPO platform could identify a Madrid-based railway engineer whose skills could fill that gap.

Gigs are designed to connect Arcadians with the right skills to the right work, allowing us to make better use of our talent, increasing the variety and diversity of projects our people work on whilst increasing productivity.

Energy Transition Academy

In our 2024-2026 strategy we committed to training or recruiting energy experts for Arcadis to seize opportunities in the high growth energy transition market. At the end of 2025, 800 Arcadians had been trained as energy experts.

Training is provided by the Arcadis Energy Transition Academy (ETA), which has been established to further equip Arcadians with skills needed to support grid modernization, energy infrastructure projects, decarbonization, and other aspects of energy security and transition.

The ETA offers tailored learning for a range of audiences: in ETA@Home, Arcadians access curated online modules, while technical workshops bring together staff and industry participants to share their knowledge. The ETA partners with 10 universities across India, the UK, the US, Australia, and Europe to support student cohorts and co-develop future learning, ensuring a strong pipeline of skilled talent.

Global Excellence Centers (GECs)

GECs at Arcadis are centralized hubs of technical expertise, digital capability, and scalable project delivery. Based in the Philippines, India and Romina, our GECs support Arcadis’ global operations by providing specialized design, engineering, and consultancy services that improve efficiency, standardization, and innovation across projects worldwide. They help Arcadis deliver projects faster, more cost‑effectively, and with consistent quality.

In our 2024-2026 strategy we committed to expanding our GECs. Our goals include doubling the contribution of GECs to our client projects (in terms of billable hours) and building on the experience and skills offered by our GECs. In 2025, 15% of our people were in the GECs, up from 14% the previous year.

Employee engagement

Our strategic target is for our employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to remain in the top 25% of the professional services sector for employee engagement. In 2025 we more than achieved this target, benchmarking in the top 10%. Our eNPS in 2025 was +45, compared to +46 in 2024.

DEIB at Arcadis: achieving our target for women in the workforce

Arcadis set a target to achieve 40% female representation in our workforce (excluding the US and Puerto Rico1) by the end of 2026. At the end of 2025, 40.2% of Arcadis’ workforce was female2 – meeting our strategic target. As a company, we seek to create opportunities for women at every level and eliminate the barriers that have historically limited female representation in technical roles, so we are proud to have achieved this ambitious target.

Overall, creating a safe and respectful workplace is essential to fostering an environment where every Arcadian feels valued and empowered. We recognize that a culture free from fear, harassment, discrimination, and bullying is vital to unlocking the full potential of our people. This approach enables meaningful contributions and effective collaboration across our teams.

In 2025, we refreshed our global Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) strategy to place greater emphasis on broad-based inclusion. Our DEIB philosophy is built on the principle of ‘Inclusion by Design’, whereby we create conditions for every Arcadian to thrive. We believe that inclusion has a positive impact on our people, our culture, and our clients. Through inclusive talent practices, a culture of belonging, and client advisory expertise, we are shaping a workplace and world where diversity fuels innovation and sustainable outcomes for all our stakeholders.

Our five Global Affinity Groups (Gender, Access & Neurodiversity, Ethnicity & Heritage, Age, and Pride) ensure that diverse perspectives are embedded in our decision-making processes. Their insights further shape client offerings and talent management, including how we attract and retain talent. Business leaders across the organization engage with our groups to share initiatives as they are being developed and bring affinity groups into discussions to understand the barriers and opportunities faced by our employees.

1 These exclusions are in place to comply with US law. The 40% gender participation target shared at our latest Capital Markets Day will remain in place across the rest of the world.
2 Excluding workforce in the US and Puerto Rico.

Our values, our behaviors 

We serve a global growth market that is outpacing inflation. As such, our 2024-2026 strategy is built around the market and client dynamics we have identified as being most critical to our business.

Value

People first

We care for each other and create a safe and respectful working environment where our people can grow, perform, and succeed, placing people and their experience at the center of our solutions.

Behavior

We value each other

We create an inclusive environment where everyone feels fairly treated and listened to, respecting the principles of equality and diversity at all times.

Value

Client success

We are passionate about our clients’ success and bring insights, agility, and innovation to co-create value working collaboratively to learn and recognizing our successes are mutual.

Behavior

We deliver our promises

We do what we say we are going to do when we say we are going to do it.

Value

Integrity

We always work to the highest professional and ethical standards and establish trust by being open, honest and responsible. We are accountable to ourselves, our clients, the communities we serve and our commitment to sustainable outcomes for future generations.

Behavior

We always bring our best

We operate to the best of our abilities. We continue to learn and improve to ensure we have all the skills needed for the future.

Value

Sustainability

We base our actions for clients and communities on environmental responsibility and social and economic advancement, ensuring our solutions enhance community inclusion for now, and into the future.

Behavior

We dare to shape the future

We focus on innovation and growth to improve quality of life and create a sustainable future.

Value

Collaboration

We value the power of diversity and our global capabilities and deliver excellence, bringing the very best of our people and solutions for our clients by working as One Arcadis.

Behavior

We work as one team

We collaborate to bring the right people and knowledge together to achieve the best result. We recognize each other’s strengths and work together to bring out the best in one another.

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